The use of tennis, squash, racquetball, and paddle ball rackets or the ute of hand tools such as various types of hammers (claw, rip, finishing, ball pein, soft face, tack, brick, drywall, shingling, etc.), picks, various hatchets and axes, and other striking devices require substantial physical exertion of a user during the course of activity associated with the striking device. Frequently, this results in profuse perspiration, especially of the holding hand. As a result, it is often difficult for a user to hang onto and maintain control of the striking device as the build up of perspiration can result in a significant reduction of friction between the user's hand and the grip of the handle. During use, the handle structure begins to warm up and retain accumulated heat, which further exacerbates the problem. Occasionally, a player or user may find that the combination of heat, perspiration and contact with the handle can result in irritation of the skin of his or her hand. During use of the striking device, the hand, arm and elbow of a user's arm is repeatedly subjected to a jarring shock each time the striking device impacts against an object. The repetitive shock being applied to the user can and often does result in injury to the hand, arm or elbow of the user.
In the prior art, various handle designs have been disclosed with ventilation and shock absorbing features but, for various reasons, none have proved to be particularly successful in practice. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,907,810 issued May 13, 1990 to C. L. Whiteford discloses a ventilated and shock absorbing racket handle construction comprised of a rigid tubular shell having a large number of small holes in its surface area and a handle shank mounted in the shell. Air passages are provided between the handle shank and the shell and air can enter these passages through the holes contained in the shell. The shell is wrapped with a leather member also containing a plurality of holes. However, the racket handle in the Whiteford patent relies on random alignment of the holes in the leather wrapping member and the holes in the shank member which often results in few holes in the shell being left open. Furthermore, it is believed that the air passageways and small holes disclosed in the Whiteford patent are not sufficient enough to result in the air flow required to satisfactorily cool a user's hand.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,018,733 issued May 28, 1991 to T. M. M. Buand discloses a handgrip for a racket for ball games that includes a narrow ventilation chamber formed between the body of the handgrip and a sleeve surrounding the grip. However, the outer sleeve is flexible, resulting in the volume of the narrow chamber being varied by the pressure exerted by a player's hand. Again, the construction is such that the airflow in the grip will be insufficient to cool a user's hand or satisfactorily absorb shock.
Therefore, it is an object of the invention to provide a striking device handle which is able to satisfactorily cool and dry a user's hand, and to absorb some of the jarring impact that occurs when an object is hit by the striking device. The handle of the present invention is intended to provide at least some of these desirable features.
In the case of a racket or paddle handle version, it is further an object of the invention to provide a handle that has desirable handling and playing characteristics.